Irina works lives at the intersection of Information Sciences, Communication Studies and Human Computer Interaction, as she examine how people adapt and integrate an increasingly broad array of information and communication technologies into their daily lives, with a special focus on technology adoption and use under conditions of strain. Her studies of how people use technologies to maintain relationships and to cope with adverse circumstances expose how technology use is deeply shaped by local social and political contexts.

She study networks - from a structural and a substantive points of view. She focus on disruptions as a methodological approach to understanding how the human practice of relating and social structures more broadly function and change over time. She believes that we have focused too much on "connection" and "interaction" and that it is time to turn to relational thinking as a productively different point of view.

Her main areas of expertise are interpersonal relationships, social networks, issues of trust & privacy, interaction design, transnational relational practice, mediated communication, crisis informatics and disaster research